“I don’t know why in the world I’m writing you this long frightfully intimate letter. I don’t seem to know why I do anything these days. I know its most improper for a respectable married lady, and I certainly have no reason to suppose you want to be bothered by me any more after the way I did. But somehow you stick in the back of my head. You might write me a line, just out of compassion, if you’re not too busy with all your sheep and mountains and things.” She signed herself “as ever”, which, he reflected bitterly, might mean anything. At first the fact that she was married wholly engaged his attention. She was then finally and forever beyond his reach. This was the end sure enough. He was not going to start any long aimless correspondence with her to keep alive the memory of his disappointment. He planned various brief and chilly notes of congratulation.… Then another thought took precedence over that one. She was alone there in that hotel. Her husband was in London. She had written to him and given him her address.… His blood pounded and his breath came quick. He made his decision instantly, on impulse. He would go to New York. He wired the hotel where she was stopping for a reservation, but sent no word at all to her. He gave the bewildered and troubled Cortez brief orders by telephone to go to Arriba County in his place, arranged a note at the bank for two thousand dollars, and caught the limited the same night at seven-thirty-five. CHAPTER XXXII He looked at New York through a taxicab window without much interest. A large damp grey dirty place, very crowded, where he would not like to live, he thought. He managed himself and his baggage with ease and dispatch; his indifferent, dignified manner and his reckless use of money were ideally effective with porters, taxi drivers and the like. When he reached the hotel about eight o’clock at night he went to his room and made himself carefully immaculate. He studied himself with a good deal of interest in the full length mirror which was set in the bath room door; for he had seldom encountered such a mirror and he had a considerable amount of vanity of which he was not at all conscious. It struck him that he was remarkably good-looking, and indeed he was more so than usual, his eyes bright, his face flushed, his whole body tense and poised with purpose and expectation. He went down to the lobby, looked Julia up in the register, ascertained the number of her room, and made a note of it. Then he asked the telephone girl to call her and learn whether she was in. “Yes; she is in. She wants to know who’s calling, please.” “Tell her an old friend who wants to surprise her.” He did not care to risk any evasion, and he also wanted his arrival to have its full dramatic effect. The telephone girl transmitted his message. “She says she can’t come down yet … not for about half an hour.”